Press Review

“Hayots Ashkhar” reports that the chairman of the Armenian Writers Union, Levon Ananian, and the heads of several other professional unions announced on Thursday a crusade against mass media which they think disseminate slanderous reports. Outlets “discrediting” them and “distorting facts” will receive a special “prize,” Soviet currency banknotes printed in 1937, from them once a year. The pro-establishment paper slams the initiative, saying that Ananian himself is notorious for suppressing dissent within his union.

“Chorrord Inknishkhanutyun” says the controversial government bill on foreign-language schools stems not only from business interests but the “Soviet nostalgia” of its authors, who it claims want to “please their masters” in Russia. “We have to repeat: the language is not a business asset that can be traded for a debt, the language is the only guarantee of our national identity,” says the paper.

In an interview with “Iravunk,” Naira Zohrabian, a senior member of the Prosperous Armenia Party (BHK) chairing the Armenian parliament committee on European integration, comments on Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s pledge to keep the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on Turkish foreign policy agenda. “We are in serious delusion thinking that if our cause is just, then everyone should embrace it. That is absolutely not the case,” she says. She says many European parliamentarians adopting resolutions on Karabakh know very little about the conflict zone and the South Caucasus in general. “We need to work with those people as well,” adds Zohrabian. “We need to present the realities to them, instead of waiting for others to give them wrong information backed up by Azerbaijani petrodollars.”

Gagik Melikian, a parliament deputy from the presidential Republican Party of Armenia (HHK), assures “Aravot” that there is no discord within Armenia’s governing coalition. “The [three] political parties carry out their activities within the framework of the [2008] coalition memorandum,” he says. Still, Melikian dismisses as “hasty” the BHK’s stated ambition to win a majority in the next National Assembly. “Over time, those who are talking about that will start looking for ways of renouncing their own statements,” he says. “The Republican Party is now the number one political force in terms of its power, people and resources.” He predicts that the HHK will therefore win the 2012 parliamentary elections and the 2013 presidential ballot.